UMass Med students matched to residencies

Friday

Mar 21, 2014 at 6:26 PM

By Mark Sullivan CORRESPONDENT

WORCESTER — Khanh-Van Tran was 8 when she and her family emigrated from Vietnam to Worcester in search of a better life. On Friday, the soon-to-be graduate of the University of Massachusetts Medical School was overjoyed to find out she will launch her career as a physician in this city she calls home.

On Match Day at UMass Medical, Ms. Tran was one of 121 fourth-year medical students who learned where they will be assigned for their hospital residencies later this year. Ms. Tran learned she had been matched with her first choice, UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester.

"It means a lot," said the alumna of Worcester's South High School, who grew up across the street from Clark University. "I grew up in Worcester. I love this community, and UMass gave me the best medical education. I feel so lucky that I matched here.

"It's a community I want to make a difference in. It means the world to me."

Ms. Tran, 31, who is going into internal medicine, is the first doctor in her family. Her parents, she said, are very proud. "My dad had tears in his eyes today."

Hers was just one of many good stories at the medical school's Albert Sherman Center Friday.

Worcester native Michael Richardson's family members gathered around as he opened his envelope and learned he had been matched to Carney Hospital in Dorchester, which has an innovative new program in his chosen field of family medicine.

His wife, Monica Wang, a research fellow at UMass Medical School, jumped into his arms for an embrace. "I'm so happy," said Mr. Richardson, 27. "Carney was my top choice. They're really trying to challenge medicine."

Ms. Wang, 28, who holds a doctorate in public health, was weighing several offers of assistant professorships starting this summer. With Mr. Richardson headed to Carney Hospital, the couple, currently living in Westboro, can plan accordingly.

Mr. Richardson, a member of the Nipmuc Tribe centered in Grafton, is the first in his family to attend medical school.

Family medicine particularly appealed to Mr. Richardson, an alumnus of St. John's High School in Shrewsbury, "because it was the field that most closely resembled my philosophy toward patient care, which is seeing patients as people and not pathology."

Too often in medicine, he said, the patient behind the diagnosis of congestive heart failure or cancer can be overlooked. "You don't really see the person as a grandmother who has a worried family," he said. "Family medicine tends to focus on that family, and communities, more."

Nearly 60 percent of this year's UMass Medical School graduating class is going into primary care, and 59 students — more than half the class — are staying in Massachusetts, said Dr. Michael F. Collins, chancellor of the medical school.

Match Day, Dr. Collins said, "is one of the most exciting days of the year. After four years of really hard work, (students) have hopes and dreams, and to see them realized is spectacular."

Kristin Gerson, 32, graduating with a combined medical degree and doctorate in cancer biology, was carrying her youngest child in a baby sling. The mother of three — ages 5, 2, and 4 months — has been commuting from Waltham for eight years while working on her degree. Her husband, Zach, 31, is a lawyer in Boston.

"Whatever is in the envelope is affecting the lives of five people," said Mrs. Gerson. "There's a weight that comes with that. We're excited. It's a great adventure."

When she opened her envelope, she discovered she had been matched to her first choice, Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Boston, where she will enter the program in obstetrics and gynecology.

"My husband gets to keep his job," she said with a smile. "I'm elated. I feel like all of the hard work over the last eight years kind of came to fruition at this moment. I just feel very fortunate, for myself and for our family. I feel very proud."

As the fourth-year med students were called, one by one, to receive their match envelopes, each, by school tradition, dropped a dollar bill in a bag. The last person to be called to receive his or her envelope would win the kitty.

Students waiting for their envelopes clasped dollar bills in their hands. A student who had received hers held it up to the light.

At the signal, all opened their envelopes at once, and whoops and cheers filled the room. "Where are you going? Where are you going?" one med student called enthusiastically to a classmate.

The last person called to receive her envelope, Alessandra Moore, 27, of Medfield, learned she will be entering the general surgery program at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, where her father and grandfather were surgeons as well.

As for her $121 winnings? She said she would be heading to Citizens Wine Bar in downtown Worcester Friday afternoon — and her classmates were invited to join her.